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General intellect of the new materialism
Neomaterialism by Joshua Simon prevents us to fall of perceiving new materialism as a minimalistic approach as well as to reconsider our practice as a curator, architect and artist in transversal way.
Joshua Simon, Neomaterialism, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2013, pp. 193
“Producing oneself is becoming the dominant occupation of a society where production no longer has an object” writes the Invisible Committee in The Coming Insurrection, which writer/Director and chief curator at MoBY Joshua Simon refers in his book Neomaterialism.
Neomaterialism includes Joshua’s articles that are basically focusing on the contemporary conditions of commodities under the light of the stream of new materialism. New materialism as a most discussed and approached thought on “things” of ontology in recent years in art and architecture; the book develops through this angle also a well-advanced theoretical discussion on the nature of commodity as materialization of social relations.
Joshua, draws a discussions on commodity to debt to flexible labor by comparing arguments and literature from Marx, Lazaratto, Arendt, Latour, Dean, Graber, Marazzi, Harvey and others. What make these theoretical discussions on labor and material more interesting (which are lasted from the last century) are Joshua’s examples on detailed experiences of representation about curatorial practices, art and architectural installations and exhibitions.
In that sense the book has two angles to follow: a depth critical discussion about the school of new materialism that takes the “object” or “thing” as a production of social assemblages along in a recent economical perspectives. Secondly, Joshua elaborates these theories with his curatorial practices and art/architectural production within commodity circulation and precariat world.
As each article/chapter from the beginning follows each other, the writer elaborates his argument on analyzing the means of materialization through capitalist circulation. Chapters such as The Community and the Exhibition, Unreadymade discuss artwork, exhibition as a commodity and representation how things co-exists. “Precariat is the new proletariat” asserts the writer in end of the chapter of The Overqualified, in which he discuss several definitions of labors from the labor literature such as “general intellect”, “affective labor”, “immaterial labor”, “communicative labor” and analysis the labor and work distinction which is not valid anymore in our current labor conditions. As currently architecture offices based on total slavery of immaterial labor or curators/artists are continuously creating a precariat labor; the circulation of the “form” of architecture and art is worth to analysis via our experiences with things/materials.
Neomaterialism is a book that prevents us theoretically to fall into the pessimism of perceiving the thought of new materialism as a minimalistic approach as well as to reconsider our practice as a curator, architect and artist in transversal way in order to create a further criticism not only on the modernist but also postructualist heritages of representation, subject-object (by exemplifying through exhibition, architectural form and artwork).
